The ancients weren't stupid, they just lacked information

On "traditional" diets, safe drinking water, and why having more respect for the past leaves one less susceptible to gullibility about "ancient wisdom"

One of the classic tricks for duping gullible people is to describe a claim as being “ancient knowledge”, like “traditional” diets and other “forgotten wisdom”. Bonus points apply if a mystical spin is involved, if the attribution can originate in a faraway place, or if the story can involve something being “rediscovered”.

■ Paradoxically, the success of this technique is inversely correlated with the actual historical literacy of the audience. The less they actually know about the past, the more likely they are to fall for claims that secret knowledge was locked away.

■ We in the modern era were not born magically smarter than people who came before us (at least, not appreciably). Pluck a baby born 500 or 1,000 years ago and raise them with modern immunizations, nutrition, safe drinking water, and access to all the tools of today’s knowledge, and that baby would most likely turn out just like any of us.

■ It takes some serious intellectual humility to admit that it’s not that we are born innately smarter, but that we benefit from all kinds of environmental factors -- above all, the collection of more and better information, the trial and error of generations, and ultimately the transmission of that knowledge from one person to the next.

■ Yes, there are lots of things to be discovered in the historical record, and there are even some very good ideas and practices that have been lost to disuse or failures of transmission along the way. But claims about secretive “ancient wisdom” usually depend upon people’s eagerness to think that they’re privy to inside information, which is generally less fun than investing the effort required to figure out why today’s practices resulted from trial and error and research in the past.

■ It’s hard work to maintain, expand, and transmit the world’s knowledge from one generation to the next. We have to be humble enough to know that we’re not special geniuses and that our predecessors weren’t stupid -- they just didn’t have the same knowledge resources as we do. Our task is to preserve and expand those resources, knowing that old ideas sometimes will need a contemporary boost, but trusting as well that history should be treated as a proving ground for successes and failures among humans whose innate intelligence and nature were very much in the past like ours are today.